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044 BAR readers, as well as scholars, have long puzzled over the distinctive tripartite pillared buildings that have been discovered in so many excavations in Israel. Their architecture seems simple enough: long rectangular buildings divided into...

How can we discover—or uncover—the Israelite God in the text of the Hebrew Bible? That is the problem scholars refer to as Old Testament theology. A recent book that has created quite a stir in the academy, written by the prominent Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann, answers...

040 At the end of the late Nahman Avigad’s magisterial Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Sealsa appear a number of indices and lists that are not only helpful to scholars but also interesting to thumb through at odd moments. Leafing through the...

021 I. For more than 1,800 years, the mirrorlike natures of the Buddha and Jesus remained buried in the ancient texts of each religion. Then scholars examining these holy books began to detect remarkable patterns. Hardly anything was known in the...

Bible scholar Richard Elliott Friedman claims to have found the world’s first prose masterpiece embedded in the Bible. This hidden book, he claims, opens with the Creation and ends with the death of David. Our two-part coverage begins with an article by BR editor Hershel Shanks, who details Friedman’s unconventional theory. In part two, Friedman’s book serves as a springboard for a spirited discussion among three leading scholars on how the Bible came to be.

035 Hershel Shanks: Do you agree or disagree, or don’t you know whether you agree, with Dick Friedman’s contention that J, as we have it in the Tetrateuch, is also the author of the passages he identifies in Deuteronomy and the rest of the...

Dead Sea Scroll scholars have long debated the identity of the shadowy figure described in the scrolls as the Teacher of Righteousness. But was he a historical figure or someone expected at the end of time?

024 II. If Jesus did not travel to India, if the Buddha’s teachings did not enter Palestine via the Silk Road, then how can their similarities be explained? In the following essay, Marcus Borg contemplates the possibility that they derive not...

Living in southeastern Italy during the late fourth century B.C., the Darius Painter decorated vases with scenes from Greek Mythology—sometimes inspired by Alexander the Great’s campaigns in the East.

By John Herrmann

036 The Darius Painter not only recreated the shimmering world of Greek myth on the surfaces of his vases; he also acted as a kind of journalist-bard, painting scenes of historical events as news came in from far-flung places. A Greek-speaker,...

052 Poor Wenamun! Stranded in a foreign city, his money stolen and letters of introduction misplaced, the Egyptian official throws himself upon the mercy of the local administration—an all-too-familiar tale of a traveler in distress. But Wenamun’...

018 Last year, on the Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s, the lead story on the front page of The Boston Globe was not about President Clinton’s impending impeachment trial in the Senate, nor about Saddam Hussein’s effort to shoot...

Discovered at Troy; smuggled to Greece, bestowed upon Germany; confiscated by the USSR—Schliemann’s gold is still causing a ruckus.

By Klaus GoldmannÖzgen AcarStephen K. Urice

022 Return the Treasure to Germany Why should the events of World War II abrogate longstanding agreements over cultural ownership? Priam’s Treasure belongs in Berlin’s Museum of Pre- and Early History, part of the German system of federal museums...

023 We should have a very good idea what Jesus’ tomb looked like, with the references in the Gospels and our knowledge of contemporaneous tombs found in and around Jerusalem. Yet until now, most of the reconstructions of this most famous of tombs...

A remarkable child, his birth hailed by visitors from afar, grows into a miracle worker who spreads a faith of love and compassion. Jesus? Yes, but also Buddha. Our authors explore the uncanny parallels in their lives and whether there are any connections.